Can Information Be Temporarily Stored in the Brain?

Information is formless and without appearance, a "thing" that is not a thing, whereas the brain is material form (rūpa). How can the two merge together? Try to imagine: can a room temporarily retain a piece of news? Can something that has happened be preserved in a room or in space for even a little while? Absolutely not; likewise, the brain cannot preserve even a single bit of information.

If the brain could preserve information, then by slicing open the brain of a living or dead person piece by piece, one could find that information, and could even examine and study it. Then all of a person's secrets could be revealed, and people in the world would have no secrets at all; solving criminal cases would be far too easy for detectives, there would be no millennium-old unsolved cases or wrongful convictions, and no mystery would remain unsolved. If a computer could store information, would taking the computer apart reveal the information? If a mobile phone could store information, would dismantling the phone allow one to find the information?

If information belonged to material form (rūpa), it would be composed of the seeds of the four great elements; only the tathāgatagarbha contains the seeds of the four great elements, while the brain does not contain them and cannot store information. Moreover, the brain's capacity could not hold it all. Therefore, information should be stored in the tathāgatagarbha and comes from the tathāgatagarbha. If information does not belong to material form (rūpa) and is not composed of the four great elements, then it exists in a formless, appearanceless seed state, and must be stored in the tathāgatagarbha; the brain cannot store seeds. Footprints on a wall or on the ground belong to the material form of the four great elements; they are not information, and of course the eyes can see them.